Creations - Now, The River Bank

Isn't it strange, the way creativity works ? I've been trying to write a villanelle. These are the luxuries a mama can indulge in when her children are away. I took a lunch break, which was less about hunger and more about frustration, and while I stood at the sink peeling my hard-boiled egg, I thought about an earlier conversation about co-sleeping. My favourite co-sleeping factoid is that the Japanese have a special word for the child who sleeps between her parents. The sleeping child is like a river and each of her parents is a river bank, keeping her safe. And then - BAM! - goodbye villanelle, hello haiku :)

 

Now, the river bank

Is free to be the river.

Her children are grown.


Her children are grown.

Now she sings of river-tide.

She sings of smooth stone.


She sings of smooth stone,

Of time, of what she now knows:

Drifting, she travels.


Drifting, she travels.

Further and nearer, riddle

Without an answer.


Without an answer

She is free to gaze upwards

As trees cross above.


As trees cross above,

Bowing, she returns their gaze.

The children’s voices –


The children’s voices

Echo from the passing banks,

Young crows in a dream.


Now the river bank

Is free to be the river.

Her children are grown.

 

 

The Kids Are OK

So, all Good Feminists know Retro Housewives are A Bad Thing, right ?

( Thank goodness for bloggers like Blue Milk and The Blasphemous Homemaker who do a wonderful job of articulating a coherent and complex reply to some of the more didactic commentators out there. Myself, I'm only good at snarky capitalisation.)

One of the more mind-boggling criticisms of stay-at-home-mothers I've come across in the past week is the accusation that staying at home teaches and reinforces sexist roles and attitudes in our children.

I did a little investigative reporting at the dinner table last night.

Both girls reported feeling no familial pressure to grow up and become stay at home mums. Some eye rolling then ensued as I pursued the topic of whether they felt capable and able to have a career as an adult. Arwen looked at me like I was insane. Lucy kindly said, yes, they knew about Having a Career and the odds were good they'd have one.

With Yoshi I went for a simple yes and no.

"Hey, you know mums can go to work outside the home, right ?"

"Yes."

"And dads can stay home and take care of children ?"

"Yes." Long suffering tone...Mum has bee in bonnet...how long will this inane questioning over things we take for granted go on ?

Satisfied that neither of the girls felt apron-related Retro Mum oppression or that Yoshi was a cave-man in waiting, I turned my attention to the reasons they may have escaped my pernicious influence. 

Reason One: Me. Sure, I set a bad example with my evil muffin baking ways but I counterbalance this with a healthy dose of liberal education.

Reason Two:  I'm the primary care-giver around here. Have been for the last 1.5 decades. But even in this regressive set up, due to the nature of C's work, he's at home as much as he's out. There's a blurring of lines when one or both parent works from home - no-one gets to claim Home, no-one belongs to Work.

Reason Three: All the kids have seen me work from the time they were tiny, and I'm not just talking about scrubbing the toilet. They've seen me study, volunteer as a breastfeeding counsellor, run book clubs and theater groups and children's co-ops. They've seen me teach for pay at a school and a library. They've seen me write. They've seen me run meetings. They've seen me tutor for cash. Even though my main job is parenting, they haven't lacked a female model of work.

Reason Four - All kids - yes, even the homeschooled ones! - live in a community. And what do you know ? They've grown up with a grandmother who works. Aunties who work. A grandfather who does grandchild-care. Friends of mine who work part-time. Neighbours whose dad stays home while mum works full-time. Jeez Louise, they are not stupid, my kids. They understand that the way we live is one among many. And that they are free - or as free as men and women can be in a consumerist society - to chose to live in a way that corresponds with their values and beliefs.

At which point we find ourselves back at the liberal education I spend my days providing...

The kids are OK.

Or, as Arwen says: Mum, get over it.

The Leaning Tower of Cardboard

Today was Yoshi's first day of term. We watched a BrainPop video about skyscrapers and he decided to run with a skyscraper project that was his own idea.

First came the build.

Then it was time to subject the tower to a a little stress.

A deluge.

A hurricane, courtesy of my hairdryer ( out of shot ).

The tower and its sticky tape buttresses held up pretty well to our first two natural disasters, although some reinforcements were necessary after the hurricane. We pretty much went through a roll of tape.

And then came the asteroid strike. Actually, three asteroid strikes.

Hence, the Leaning Tower of Cardboard. We also had some compression issues on the ground floor. Sorry, squashed tenants. As Yoshi said, it's quite stressful being an engineer.

Creations - Lucy Blogs About Amnesty, I Sit on the Sofa And Crochet

My eldest was born with a sense of social justice. It's one of the things I admire about her.

Click through to read some information about Amnesty International. Their online petitions are one of the simplest ways to take meaningful action on issues of social justice.

~

As for me, I'm obsessed with crochet. Am I becoming more shallow as I age ? Possibly.

All I know is that hooking those trebles is deeply satisfying.

Anne Summers would scorn me. She thinks mothers like me, who choose the domestic sphere for an extended period of time, are ungrateful, irresponsible dilettantes. Whatever.

I mostly like what Summers has to say. I'm just getting a tad tired of the...hmm..assumption that women who don't 'attach themselves to the workforce' are stupid, and in need of a lecture from Mummy. I'm pretty clear on what I've given up. It definitely involves money and status. It doesn't involve self-determination or personhood or my brain.

Daily Life - Our Cyber Sabbath

It isn't often this mama lays down the law.

Two Sundays ago, sitting out on the swing seat on a glorious autumn day, while every other member of the family sat inside looking at a screen, I felt the need.

No screens for any of us, from sun-up to sun-down.Into the foreseeable future.

Our first Sunday, we drove far away from temptation, into the mountains, to gardens with trees blazing with reds and oranges, to a picnic in a quiet park, to the bribe of the old-fashioned lolly shop.

Yesterday we stayed close to home.

Yesterday there was time to:

Play catch with a boy for the longest time.

Sit in the sun with a big girl on my lap.

Make a double batch of pizza dough from scratch.

Take a long, neighbourhood walk.

Come home and bake pizzas together.

Eat pizzas together.

Rest and chat on my bed for a while.

Look at Lego design books.

Play six rounds of Scattergories.

Read, ride a bike, practice catching some more.

Make a trip to the library.

By day's end, I felt I'd actually spent time with the four other people in my family.

I think it's good when mama lays down the law. I need to do it more often.

Creations

I count my daughters amongst the loveliest things there are in this world.

And the stories and poems they write - mostly Arwen - and the drawings and crafts they create - mostly Lucy - are wonderful too.

This is Lucy's latest creation, The Outsiders' Society. In her own words:



Hi!
I am a fifteen year old girl living in the Southern Hemisphere. I will posting book lists, and links to websites and to news stories about issues I feel are important- such as peace, feminism, equality, nature, art, and crafts; I will be also be posting ideas for meaningful ways to celebrate days such as Earth day and Harmony day.
The title of this blog refers to to Virginia Woolf's classic book Three Guineas:

'...[A]society which the daughters of educated men might found and join...In the first place, this new society, you will be relieved to learn, would have no honorary treasurer, for it would need no funds. It would have no office, no committee, no secretary; it would call no meetings; it would hold no conferences. If name it must have, it could be called the Outsiders' Society...It would consist of educated men's daughters working in their own class - how indeed can they work in any other? - and by their own methods for liberty, equality and peace.' (A Room Of One's Own and Three Guineas, by Virginia Woolf, annotated edition published by Penguin Books, 1993)

This blog is my (small) segment of the Outsider's Society.

Please click through to The Outsiders' Society to peruse a blog with a difference - more great info/links, less personal chit-chat :)

Things I Liked About Hospital

The Privacy Curtain

Nothing is private in hospital. You hear everything - the cancer diagnosis, the family squabble, the coughing and hawking.

Yet when you draw that curtain around your bed, something wonderful happens. You have your own tiny world - bed, chair, table - and no-one intrudes. Nurses will enter and sometimes a doctor, but they are asking nothing of you. Instead they come with offerings - information, meds, linen. Otherwise you are alone. When you are tired of being alone, you pull back the curtains and only then does the world come flooding in.

Chai Lattes

To get from the ward on the 11th floor to the cafe on the 5th floor takes only a few minutes. The cafe is full of staff huddled around their coffee cups, holding early morning meetings. A patient has the leisure to wait for warm, spicy milk to be frothed and then to breathe in the cinnamon in the lift back upstairs.

It's Easy to Be Kind

These women in your ward become familiar to you. When Grace is awake all night, her lung collapsed and her corner of the ward full of x-ray and chest tubes and pain she crumbles under, finally finding the limit to her stoicism, kindness fills the room along with the early morning light.
Nurses with Endone, a hand on the shoulder, conversation from bed to bed - we see your suffering. Rest now. Rest.